


Fingerprints

by DHW



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship - Married for Visa and Immigration Purposes, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Soulmarks - Different For Different Species, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-04 17:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21201293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DHW/pseuds/DHW
Summary: In the ruins of Cardassia City, two friends discover something new.





	Fingerprints

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).

  
  
  
Out in the City of Cardassia, in the streets that ran between a patchwork of houses and rubble, two friends walked side by side. The day was almost over, the sky a haze of red and gold as the sun began to set. In the distance, little more than a ghost between the clouds, the first moon: Letau. The second and third would rise later. The Blind Moon and its ever present companion, The Nameless, shining silver in the darkness. 

“I lived here once,” said the elder of the two. The native. All grey scales and ridges and glossy black hair. “In a house on top of the hill.”

“Up there?” replied his companion. “It must have had a lovely view.”

They were walking through the district of Coranum, the dust swirling about their feet, blooming up from beneath wobbling cobbles and dry gutters. Spring was drawing to an end, the last of the rain now little more than a memory. The heat of the coming summer whispered on the northern winds. 

“Some would surely say so, Doctor.”

“But you think differently?” The doctor rolled his eyes. “Of course you do. Ever the contrarian, Garak. You’d disagree with a pot plant if you thought it might argue back.” 

Trees lined the streets, woody trunks sprouting forth from the wreckage at regular intervals, delineating where once the pavement had ended and the road began. Some were split from root to tip. Some twisted. Some little more than a shadow upon stone. But those that had survived grew tall and strong, their branches shimmering with flat golden leaves and the beginnings of buds.

“It was said that on a clear winter day, you could see right across the city, all the way to Torr. Occasionally, even to the desert beyond.” Garak placed a hand upon the small of the doctor’s back, guiding him through the rubble towards a set of stone steps. “Not that there is much to see there beyond the rocks and dust.”

“I’ve always thought deserts fascinating places.”

“Oh?”

“They’re so hostile, and yet, still full of life.” The doctor’s smile was radiant, his enthusiasm infectious. “It’s interesting, don’t you think, how things adapt? How they evolve to fill niches.” 

Despite himself, Garak couldn’t help but agree.  
  
****

*******

  
  
Excerpt from the medical library of Dr Julian Bashir:

_Though outlawed within Federation space, illegal genetic enhancement of humanoid children remains an ongoing issue within the general population. _

_Alongside well-documented complications regarding mental dysfunction, autoimmune disorders, and disorders of the autonomic nervous system, research within this group has indicated a causal link between genetic enhancement and the loss of soul marks. _

_⍴-linear ZT-cells are an essential part of the Human innate immune system. Functional analogues have been identified in both Klingon and Trill populations. Recent work by this lab (Florez, _et al_, 2368) has elucidated the role these cells play in the development of soul marks upon the skin. Interestingly, these cells show significant morphological changes in individuals subject to external genetic enhancement. _

_In this paper, we directly link the disruption of ⍴-linear ZT-cell signalling to the loss of soul mark pigmentation, a hallmark of genetically enhanced humanoids._

_\- Florez, et al. (2370). Loss of function phenotypes in ⍴-linear ZT-cell signal mutants. J. Exo Biol. 3(12):453-459. _  
  
****

*******

  
  
Upon a hillside in Coranum two friends watched the sun begin to set.

They were stood in what had once been the dining room. Hints of its original purpose lay strewn amongst the debris. A table and chairs, blackened and burnt almost to ash; silverware that glinted in the shadows beneath crumbling stone; wallpaper fragments, the pattern unrecognisable, and picture frames filled with shattered glass and paper scraps. 

A shell of what had been. A monument to the death and destruction wrought by the Dominion. 

And yet, in between the broken things of old, in the cracks and crevices of Garak’s childhood home, there was life still. Stubborn, tenacious life, much like that which lived out in the desert, with vines that curled and leaves that shimmered and flowers that bloomed. 

“Do you know what day it is, Doctor?” Garak asked.

“Not a clue,” said the doctor as he looked out across the city. “And you know, you really ought to call me ‘Julian’. Otherwise people might start to ask uncomfortable questions.”

“Old habits die hard, my dear,” Garak replied. “And what makes you think they aren’t already? For most, you are the first and only Terran they have had the pleasure to encounter. You are as mysterious to them as the stars. As are your species’ mating rituals.” He smiled. “It’s what makes the deception so easy.”

“Still…” Julian said with a frown. 

In the distance, there was the sound of voices, music. It bubbled up from the streets below, the melody asking, begging, for the clap of hands, the tapping of feet. Drums pounded out the rhythm, strings sang the melody, and over it all, there was the sound of pipes twisting and turning, pulling the listener along on their merry dance. 

“If it would make you feel more at ease, _Julian_,” said Garak, “then you are more than welcome to request an occasional display of intimacy.”

His eyes were alight with mischief. Blue, like the distant sea, ringed with deep black. Alien eyes.

“Such as?”

“You’re the mysterious Terran,” Garak replied smoothly. “Why don’t you tell me?”

A blush suffused Julian’s cheeks, almost invisible in the orange glow of the setting sun.

Almost. 

“Come now, it cannot be that embarrassing? We are married, are we not?”

“In the eyes of the state, certainly.”

“Which is surely all that matters.” Garak’s smile was wide, questioning. His fingers tapped against his thigh in time with the music from below. “It’s an arrangement that benefits us both. You get to stay on Cardassia, practicing medicine on a brand new frontier.”

“And the benefit to you?”

One melody blended into another. Faster. Lighter. The people who sang and spoke and laughed in the city streets danced in reels across the cobbles. 

“What makes you think they’re not one and the same?" Garak replied easily, placing a hand upon his companion's narrow shoulder. "You get to stay on Cardassia, meaning I get the pleasure of your company. Or, rather, I get the pleasure of discussing art and literature with you, and correcting the often idiotic thoughts you have of both.”

“You say the nicest things, Garak.”

Garak's smile was wide but bittersweet. “Well, it is expected of a husband to complement his partner from time to time.”  
  
****

*******

  
  
****

** The Culat Times, Evening Edition. 21.352.2376.  **

**Mr E. Garak and Dr J. S. Bashir**

_The marriage took place on Fifth Day, 21.345 Patan, 2376, at their home in Lakat, Cardassia Prime, between Elim Garak and Julian Subatoi Bashir. The honeymoon was spent in Cardassia City in celebration of Vrethani Sanor, and their joining. _  
  
****

*******

  
  
Upon charred rocks, between the only walls left standing, two friends sat and spoke of troublesome things. Night had fallen, and in the sky hung three moons, all full and round and shining like polished silver in the darkness.

“Does it bother you?”

“If you want an answer,” said Garak, “you’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Us,” Julian said, staring at his hands. “This marriage of convenience.”

“Why ever would it?”

Julian paused for a moment, sitting still as stone, his hands clasped in his lap. The night winds had begun to whisper through the city, bringing with them the scent of the festival that sprawled through the streets of Torr and Paldar and Akleen. They brought, too, the scent of night-blooming flowers from the desert beyond the walls. 

“You know I don’t have a mark.”

“And?”

Beams of silvery light shone down upon the pair as the moons continued their arc across the sky. Dust motes danced between them, floating past their eyes and swirling on the eddies of each slow exhale. 

“Well, presumably you do. To be born without one is vanishingly rare.” Julian paused for a moment. His face was solemn. Still. “Am I not depriving you of that connection? I hear it’s like no other.”

“So they say.”

“Another difference of opinion?”

An ache had settled in Garak’s chest. He turned his attention to the night sky, and the ruins of the city below. He remembered a time when the buildings below had been whole, when they had stretched almost to the horizon in a sea of planes and curves and sand-coloured stone. His father had lived here, then, amongst Cardassia’s best and brightest. Before he had risen to the head of the Obsidian Order, and they had moved to Paldar in the dead of night. 

“What do you know of Cardassian marks, Doctor?” he said as a cheer rose up from the streets below.

“Very little, I’m afraid. You’re a rather secretive species, and wherever they are, _whatever_ they are is not visible to human eyes.”

“Nor are they visible to Cardassian ones, except under very specific circumstances. They are made of a pigment no longer visible to us; the receptors were lost to us a long time ago, along with our venom and our tails. We have evolved, much like your own species. Just as yours descended from the trees, ours rose from the rocks, and we lost as much as we gained along the way.” He took a deep breath. “We continue to evolve, but the marks remain.”

“Then how do you find your match? If the marks cannot be seen, how can they be read?” 

Garak placed a hand on Julian's arm. His fingers rested lightly upon the fine-spun cloth of the doctor’s tunic. Beneath he could feel the muscle and bone of his companion; so fragile in comparison. He could feel the heat of his skin, too, suffusing the black and gold fabric with warmth. 

“Do you know what day it is, Doctor?” Garak repeated, as Julian placed a hand over his own. At the shake of his companion’s head, he continued, “It is Vrethani Sanor. The Festival of Sight. The day our soulmarks can be seen.”  
  
****

*******

  
  
**OPERATION ONYX -- DECLASSIFIED**

SDV: 2134 PAGES: 1 FILE: 32a

**Operative:** Elim Garak  
**Alias:** Tailor  
**Date of Examination:** 2351  
**Medical Officer:** Dr K. Parmak, Licence No. 0129471.

**Notes:**

MALE, 22 years old. Patient appears fit and healthy. Slight murmur in the anterior right chamber of the second heart. Minor thermal injury to left hand. Blood pressure within normal range: 91/64 mm/Hg. Scar tissue located on upper quadrant of chest, left hand-side: five marks, even spread, atrophic. Images attached.  
  
****

*******

  
  
In the light of the moons, two friends lay side by side upon the broken tiles of Enabran Tain’s former home, and they stared up at the sky.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” said Julian, his hand clasped in Garak’s. “How marks differ between species. The Trill, for example, have their marks incorporated into the pattern of their spots, and soulmate matching is like some great game of spot the difference. For the Ferengi, their marks are in the angle of the curve of their lobes. Klingons have the bite patterns of their intended on the inside of their left thigh, over the femoral artery.”

“And Humans?” Garak politely enquired, though he already knew the answer. 

“Fingerprints,” Julian said. He pressed his free hand to his chest, over his heart. “The fingerprints of the mate’s dominant hand across the heart.”

Garak fought not to mimic the gesture. To place his own hand over his heart, to let his fingertips match up with the prints etched into the armoured scales of his chest. To touch the fingerprints that belonged to the man beside him. 

“For Cardassians,” he said, eyes on the sky, thoughts on the man whose hand he held tight, “our marks are upon our palms. The non-dominant hand. The one that is customarily used for greeting.”

“What do they look like?” 

There was curiosity in Julian’s voice. A hint of melancholy, too. The wistful sadness of a man to which much had been denied. A normal life, namely, and with it a soul mate, the fingerprints that had once decorated his chest banished with his inferior genetics. 

Garak remained still, silent for a moment. Waiting. In the sky above, the moons sat equidistant from one another, dividing the night into three. The Ghost, the Blind, and the Nameless. Their combined light pooled upon the city, casting it into shades of white and silver-grey. 

The music that had tugged and pulled at the pair changed. It became soft, almost mournful. The drums stopped, the strings and pipes were silenced, and all that was left was the sound of voices, of singing, the words that of a language long dead. 

The song swelled up from the streets below, sweeping over the city in waves, bringing with it a calm unlike anything Garak had ever known. 

“Would you like to see?” he said softly. 

Julian nodded. “Yes.” 

“Then look at your palm.”  
  
****

*******

  
  
In 2371, Elim Garak wrote the following:

_My dear Doctor,_

_I must confess that I found our conversation this afternoon most baffling. However, I have given your thoughts due consideration, and am fully prepared to modify my previous opinion on the matter, vis-à-vis soulmarks. _

_In addition, I would like to suggest a widening of your research to include interspecies relationships and the marks that result thereof. Your thinking on the subject, interesting though it is, I find deplorably narrow. Some may go so far as to say prejudiced. _

_You posit that the marks are specific to each species, defined by whatever physical attribute makes individuals within said species themselves unique. It’s an idea that has merit, I admit. However, it must be clear to you, Doctor, given your vast intellect, that your theory of specificity has a fatal flaw. _

_Do you truly believe that we are predestined to love only those of our own species?_

_I can only hope not, for my own skin begs to differ. As, I suspect, does yours._

_Yours,  
Garak. [unsent] _

In 2373, Elim Garak burnt it.  
  
****

*******

  
  
Out in Cardassia City, in the shadow of so many broken things, two friends became something else. More than companions. More than a marriage made for the sake of visas. More than the sum of their parts.

“I don’t understand,” said Julian, watching the shape unfurl across his palm. 

A cross, the vertical bar off-centre. Great, looping strokes arced from each bar, crossing back and forth over the central line like snakes. Effortlessly elegant. Completely baffling. 

“It’s a name,” said Garak. “My name. Written in the script of my ancestors.” 

“I… I don’t understand,” Julian repeated softly. 

“The pigment beneath the skin reacts with the moonlight, rendering the mark briefly visible to the naked eye. It is rare that the moons are in the correct alignment—it only occurs once every twenty-three years.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Julian replied. 

“Then what did you mean?”

There was a pause. A few seconds. Perhaps a minute. To Garak, it felt like hours. To Julian, a blink. 

“I had marks, Human marks, when I was a child,” he said, staring at his palm. “They disappeared when my parents had me enhanced.” 

“They didn’t disappear, Julian. They merely changed, as did mine upon entering the Order.” Garak sat up. He took hold of the hem of his tunic and pulled it up and over his head, exposing his scales to the midnight air. He tossed it to the ground beside them. “We are forever in flux. None of us are set in stone. Our choices, our experiences change us - quite literally. Despite what many would have us believe, we are masters of our own fate, our own destiny, Julian, and I know that just as surely as I know the marks on my chest, and the heart that lies beneath them belong to you. Have always belonged to you, even before my scales changed to show it.”

The music that drifted up from the streets had faded into silence. The sound of the tiny creatures that scurried between rubble and ruin filled the air, as did the rustle of leaves and the footsteps of merrymakers heading to their beds. In the charred remains of Tain’s former home, there was the sound of shallow breathing. 

“Was that why you married me?” said Julian, rising to mirror Garak, his tone accusatory.

Garak shook his head. 

“I married you so that you would not be deported back to the Federation,” Garak replied. “So that you could stay here, with me, for as long as you cared to.” 

“How long have you known about my mark?”

“I didn’t know for certain until tonight. Before that, all I had were theories and suspicions.”

Julian’s eyes were wild. Afraid. And perhaps just a little bit hopeful.

“And if you had been wrong?” he said. “What would you have done?”

Garak leant forward and kissed lips that were soft, warm, and tasted of red leaf tea. Julian’s lips. His soulmate’s lips. Garak’s heart leapt in his chest, as did Julian’s, and their marks burned with an aching sweetness at the consummation. 

After a moment, Garak drew back, his eyes wide and searching. 

“Exactly that,” he said softly, his hand at Julian’s jaw. “And my heart would have been yours all the same.”


End file.
